Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

*

Benjamin led the group of men through the paved campus paths. The Hebrew University at Mount Scopus covered the hillside with squat buildings constructed between wars in conflicting architectural styles. Students in flannel shirts and military-style winter coats glanced curiously at the ultra-Orthodox men.

The archeology department occupied a three-story structure that faced the descending desert hills to the east. The office on the top floor was marked: Professor Bira Galinski – Department Chair.

In the small reception area, a young woman looked up.

“Good morning,” Benjamin said. “I’m Rabbi Mashash from Neturay Karta.”

“I know who you are. I heard your speech at our dig in Tel Gamla.”

Benjamin smiled. “Did you like it?”

“It was better than throwing rocks.”

“But you still won’t leave our ancestors’ bones in peace for the coming of the Messiah?”

“ I don’t think the Messiah wants to come while the bones of live Jews are broken with rocks.”

“Excuse me,” Lemmy said, “but can we see Professor Galinski?”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“At home. Something happened to her mother. She got the news last night.”

Lemmy was surprised. Other than he, only Shin Bet knew about Tanya’s injury. Why would they tell Bira about it?

On their way back to the van, Lemmy asked, “Do you know where Bira lives?”

Benjamin smiled. “Last month, the Supreme Court rejected our petition against the digging of an ancient graveyard on the French Hill, north of Jerusalem. Our people were very upset, and there was talk of violence. Rabbi Gerster and I met with Professor Galinski at her home. No one knew about it. At Neturay Karta, she’s considered an instrument of the devil.”

“The devil?” Lemmy laughed. “She’s just an archeologist.”

“She’s the leading archeologist in Israel.”

“I see. How did the meeting go?”

Benjamin sighed. “It started well, she explaining how Israelis crave archeological evidence of our past national life here, and he explaining that Orthodox Jews believe that graves were resting places until the Messiah comes and resurrects the righteous. But soon their voices rose, she accused him of trying to enforce primitive religious rules at the expense of modern science, and Rabbi Gerster called her Bar-Giyorah.”

“Bar Giyorah?”

“The uncompromising nationalist leader in the great revolt against Rome, which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple.”

“I remember.” Lemmy imagined his father with Tanya’s daughter or, more strangely, with the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, confronting each other over an unbridgeable ideological gap.

The van followed Martin Buber Road, down the ridge connecting Mount Scopus with the Mount of Olives, past the Russian church spires of St. Mary Magdalene on the left, along the Valley of Kidron, where Lemmy noticed the hewn stone hand of Absalom’s Tomb, King David’s beloved, rebellious son.

*

Rabbi Gerster imagined Lemmy running, out of breath, a group of armed Shin Bet agents hot on his heels. There was silence around the breakfast table, and Agent Cohen repeated his threat: “We’ll hunt him down like a dog!”

“A bunch of foxes,” Elie said, “chasing after a dog.”

“That’s right!”

“Be careful. Sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted.”

“Who’s going to stop us? You?” The Shin Bet agent unbuttoned his jacket, reached inside, and pulled out Elie’s sheathed blade. “Won’t you need this?”

“In my time, Shin Bet was very selective.” Elie flexed his yellow-stained fingers as if preparing for a delicate piece of manual undertaking. “No Sephardic boys were let loose running sensitive operations.”

“Come on,” Itah said, “that’s below the belt.”

Agent Cohen laughed, but his face was bitter. “Intelligence czar, ah? Exterminator of enemies?” He slammed the sheathed blade on the table. “You’re a nobody, Weiss! Nobody! ”

With a sense of pending doom, Rabbi Gerster said, “It’s not worth it, Elie.”

“ You’re a has-been,” Agent Cohen kept going, “a nursing home candidate, a useless piece of broken machinery!”

Elie removed the oxygen tube from his nose and let it drop to the floor by the tank. “Sometimes a little pinky can bring down a mighty lion.”

“Now you’re a poet too?” Agent Cohen leaned over the table, his face up close against Elie’s. “Everybody tells me to be careful with Elie Weiss. A dangerous man, they say.” He poked Elie in the chest. “All I see is a pathetic old man. A sclerotic mummy. A joke! ”

Rabbi Gerster suddenly realized that this was the culmination of Elie’s calculated provocations, carefully staged in rising succession to build up Agent Cohen’s rage and recklessness like a musical composition building up to a climactic crescendo. And there was nothing anyone could do to save the foolish agent.

“Again with the poking?” Elie looked down at the finger. “Is this some kind of a Moroccan custom? Iraqi? Egyptian? Where did your parents come from?”

“You have a problem with it?” Agent Cohen poked him harder. “Do you?”

With calmness that distracted from the speed of his movements, Elie’s right hand clenched Agent Cohen’s forefinger and twisted it sideways, producing the crunchy sound of a breaking bone.

“ Ahhhh! ”

Still holding the broken finger with his right hand, Elie’s left hand rose to Agent Cohen’s red face and threaded a pinky under his upper eyelid.

“ Don’t move,” Elie said, “or you’ll lose the eye.”

Agent Cohen’s cry was interrupted by a burst of vomit from his mouth.

Elie moved out of the way, let go of the broken finger, and collected his blade. He maneuvered around the end of the table, his pinky remaining inside Agent Cohen’s eye socket. “That’s a good fellow.” From behind, he made the Shin Bet officer sit down. “Will you cooperate or do you want to look like Moshe Dayan?”

Agent Cohen bit down on his lower lip and moaned in pain.

“ Take his gun,” Elie ordered Rabbi Gerster. “His comrades will be here soon.”

*

The boy who opened Bira’s door wasn’t crying, but his effort to fight back tears was endearing. He looked at their black coats and hats and started to close the door.

Benjamin blocked the door. “May we speak with your mother please?”

“She’s not available now.”

“ It’s important.”

The boy disappeared.

Lemmy and Benjamin entered the foyer and closed the door, shutting out the sun. The rest of the men waited in the van.

Bira showed up a moment later. “Rabbi Mashash? What are you doing here?”

“ We need to talk. It will only take a few minutes.”

She led them through a narrow hallway, a kitchen, and out the back door to a patio bordered by climbing vines. They sat on white plastic chairs around a coffee table.

Lemmy remembered her as a twenty-year-old in an olive uniform, shouldering an Uzi machine gun. She had aged well, keeping an athletic build and lush hair, but her face was sun-beaten and her blue-gray eyes examined him with discomforting coldness. He asked, “Have you received any news from your mother?”

“You know my mother?”

“We know she’s missing.”

“ That’s what I heard.” Bira’s shoulders slumped. “Her boss called me yesterday.”

“ The chief of Mossad?”

She nodded. “I could tell he’s worried. She’s not a field agent. Why in the world would she be out there interacting with hostile-”

“ It was a business meeting,” Lemmy said. “She didn’t expect any danger.”

“ And who told you that? God?”